


The Static Continues

by milokno



Series: Five [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Body Horror, Dark Silence, Delusions, Exiles, Gen, Gore, Hallucinations, eye gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milokno/pseuds/milokno
Summary: Chase was left to stare at the ceiling the same way he had when Stacy first left him. He had his phone clutched to his chest, fingers gripping the device tighter than necessary. There were tears rolling down his temples and onto the pillowcase beneath his head.He couldn’t believe it. Any minute now, he was going to wake up on the floor in his own vomit. All this was too good to be true. It had to be a dream.He didn’t wake up.
Relationships: Past Chase Brody/Stacy Brody
Series: Five [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825780
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	The Static Continues

**Author's Note:**

> Yo! This fic goes over what might've happened before the ending of Dark Silence. It contains some gore, so please be aware of that before reading.
> 
> I would really appreciate some requests, as I love to write. I ask that if you request something, however, please refrain from asking for smut or ego-shipping, as I will not write anything with those involved.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr here: [x](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/milo-kno)
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> \- Miles

Chase hasn’t seen his kids in a long time. 

Well, no. That’s a lie. He has seen the kids. While she had threatened to take them away and never let him see them again, that wasn’t permanent. At the beginning, though, when she wouldn’t pick up Chase’s calls, it had kept him up at night. He would stare up at the ceiling, eyes glossy and his cheeks wet with the tracks of his tears, hoping that tomorrow would be the day that she would let him see his kids again.

Eventually, that day came. A couple months after she moved into her sister’s place, they arranged little “dinner-dates” so that Chase could see them.

Every other Friday, Chase gets to see his kids at the burger-joint a mile or two down the road they used to live on. He had been so worried that, after the months it had been since they had seen each other, the kids weren’t going to remember who he was. By the end of it, though, it was almost worse that they hadn’t forgotten him.

She was always there, during the dinners. There was never a moment where Chase and the kids were left at the table alone. He understood why. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that when he got drunk he didn’t get weepy or clingy. When Chase drank he was something else entirely. When they were still together, she used to tell him that when he was drunk he was more like a wild animal than anything else. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to watch her take both the kids with her when she went to the bathroom.

The worst part of the dinners, though, wasn’t that Stacy was there, or that she couldn’t trust him enough to leave the kids alone with him. The worst part of the dinners was when they inevitably came to an end. The sheer awkwardness of the situation would’ve have settled by then, at this moment nothing more than a distant memory. Chase would be wondering why he’d been dreading this all week. It would hit him, once he notices the tight smile on Stacy’s lips, and how she’s checking the time on her watch every so often. He’s left paralyzed when she interjects the story their daughter’s telling him to tell her that it’s time to go.

His daughter will look over her shoulder and wave goodbye to Chase with the hand not holding onto her mother’s. Like last time, and the time before that, he’ll force a smile onto his face when he waves back. 

He’s ripped from the façade he’d been living in. A couple months ago Chase thought they were going to work things out and get back together. He’d really believed that this was something they were going to work through. Now, though?

Now, he’s left sitting alone at a smelly, grungy restaurant for the fifth time in the past three months. The color always seem less saturated once they leave, as if they take all of it with them.

Despite everything going on between them, every meal, without fail, she’ll ask Chase if he’s okay. He never knows how to answer her, not even after the first half-dozen times she’s asked. He wants to hate her. He wants to wish he never met her, or that he still didn’t miss her, but what gives him the right to hate one of the only good things to come out of his sorry ass life? What would that do for him, other than make him more miserable than he already is?

As much shit as he’d always given her, now that things were the way they were, he realized just how good he’d had it. He’d lost count of how many times he’d called her a bitch throughout their relationship, and, God— wasn’t that just the icing on the shitty, grimy cake he had cooked for himself?

He can’t look at himself anymore. He can’t— _won’t_ — see how low he’s sunk since she left. How could she stand to see him again after everything that happened between them?

She’s different, though. She always was.

“Are you okay?” Her voice is hushed. The kids are playing with their food and coloring on their menus where they sit in the booth beside her. Their voices are growing in volume at a rapid pace, but for now Stacy is busy babysitting Chase.

He flinches when she places her hand on top of his, but his eyes flicker up to meet hers, nonetheless. It’s not a command, hardly anything more than a request. The blue-tinted lights around them are illuminating her face, and Chase is soaking up everything _her_ while he still can.

Her gaze is so focused, like she’s prepared her whole life to look at him this way. He doesn’t doubt for a minute than she can see his soul, as withered and broken as it must be, with how much she’s concentrating on him. She looks so emotionless when she looks at him that he can’t stand to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds. He knows she can see it, though. How his eyes are red and puffy, glossed over from tears shed in the parking lot before he came in, and how the blue in his eyes had faded more since they saw each other last. Even with the blue lights dangling above them, his eyes are dull. There’s no hidden threat in the whisper of her voice as she repeats her question. 

He feels like a child. He’s staring down at his hands, which are folded in his lap under the table. After all this time, he still doesn’t know how to answer her. This time, however, he doesn’t lie to her. He can’t lie to himself anymore. He wants to be better, doesn’t he? Isn’t that why he’s been going to therapy?

He tells her everything.

That night, when Stacy goes to the bathroom, she leaves the kids at the table.

After what felt like an eternity of interviews, he gets a job. A steady, nine-to-five kind of job. It’s nowhere near as fun or exciting as his last one, but this time the paycheck is guaranteed. It’s not up in the air for debate. He got his own place, too. It’s small, but it has a spare bedroom which the kids could use should the need ever arise, and the rent isn’t too bad for LA standards. At least now he doesn’t have to keep sleeping on his friend’s couch. Despite Henrik’s attempts to reassure him that he was welcome to stay for as long as he wanted, he knew he’d already over-stayed his welcome. 

Every time Henrik looked at Chase, his eyes filled with this mixture of pity and astonishment. It’s the kind of look everyone seems to look at him with nowadays.

Two days before their next dinner-date, Stacy called him. He rolled over in bed, hand slapping over his phone to keep it from vibrating off the nightstand. Her name bore into his eyes like it was the sun. Hell, it might’ve been brighter for all he knew. He almost didn’t answer. He had spent the night before so far in a bottle of whiskey that all the colors in his new house had blended together. He’d wept and cried to God when he thought the walls were bleeding.

It was so much _red_.

He’d woken up in bed, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there.

He tapped the _Accept_ button harsher than he’d intended to, and he heard her voice before he’d managed to lift the phone to his ear. Words got caught in his throat, tugged at his voice box like they were connected with string. She knew. Her voice was strained tight because she knew that groggy slur Chase had in his voice when he was hungover. Despite everything, despite knowing that he was still drinking, she told him she wanted the kids to spend the weekend with him at his new place.

After they said their goodbyes, Chase was left to stare at the ceiling the same way he had when she first left him. He had his phone clutched to his chest, fingers gripping the device tighter than necessary. There were tears rolling down his temples and onto the pillowcase beneath his head.

He couldn’t believe it. Any minute now, he was going to wake up on the floor in his own vomit. All this was too good to be true. It had to be a dream.

He didn’t wake up.

Two days later, they had dinner at the same restaurant. Stacy hadn’t told the kids they were spending the weekend with Chase, so she let him be the one to tell them. His daughter, the older of the two, looped her arms around his neck so tight that he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t care. For the first time since he and Stacy had split, he felt happy.

If anyone noticed the tears rolling down his cheeks, then so be it.

Chase and his daughter had matching grins on their faces for the rest of the evening. Although she seemed a bit reluctant about actually letting Chase be alone with their kids for more than a few minutes, even Stacy was smiling more than she usually did. At the end of the meal, when he was left alone at the table, that smile never once left his face.

When he got home that night, he didn’t think about drinking once.

— 

Stacy dropped the kids off at his house the next day a little after four. She came in for a few minutes before she left and let Chase give all three of them the tour of his new place. He was filled with the same enthusiasm he used to have. He showed off the cramped rooms with enough vigor and passion that he hoped she believed he still didn’t miss their old house. Chase knew he needed to move on, but it was easier said than done.

He couldn’t gauge for sure where or not she saw through his façade.

She kissed his cheek on her way out the door. “Don’t make me regret this, Brody,” She murmured against his face, lips tickling the skin she was barely touching. He stepped back from her, his own lips pursed, and nodded. He locked the door behind her. 

His son, a few months shy of his third birthday, was still blissfully unaware of why Chase had gotten his own place. He was very curious about his new surroundings, though, and Chase had spent most of the afternoon following behind him to keep the boy out of trouble. His daughter, on the other hand, seemed to understand it perfectly well.

She told Chase, as they followed the toddler into his bedroom for the sixth time, that she knew all about divorce. Later, he choked on the water he’d been drinking— doctor’s orders— when she told him that her teacher had explained it all to her perfectly. He wasn’t so sure of that, but he didn’t think he’d be painted in a better light if he were to explain it.

He had joked, that same smile from the night before splitting across his face, “Yeah, and what does a five year old know about relationships?”

She laughed when she said, “Daddy, I’m six.”

Chase shook his head, hands coming up to rest on his hips. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, hun,” he said, “Your birthday’s in January. That’s in like— what, a month, right?”

“It was months ago!” Her giggles broke her words into pieces, but the grin on Chase’s face shattered on the floor when it fell. To prove she wasn’t lying, she held up her hands. On her left hand, all five fingers were spread out, while, on her right, just her index finger was pointed upwards. Chase stared at her with wide eyes, hands slipping off his hips to dangle uselessly at his sides. Six. His daughter couldn’t already be six, could she?

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen until it lit up. The wallpaper on his phone was still of Stacy and the kids. After a few moments, he managed to tear his eyes away from hers, and he turns his attention to the date.

May 14th.

Her birthday was four months ago. Jesus, Chase felt like crying again. No, he didn’t want to cry anymore. He wanted— he needed— a drink. Then again, drinking was exactly what got him into the predicament he’s in now, isn’t it?

His son comes running into the kitchen. He rams his entire weight, no more than thirty pounds, into Chase’s legs. The boy wraps his arms around his knees and cranes his neck to look up at him. He’s already lost so much time. If it’s May, then that meant that the little boy running through his house is three. It meant that Chase turned twenty-eight a month ago.

Why hadn’t anybody reminded him?

Nobody should’ve had to remind him.

Chase is a horrible father.

He clears his throat, bending down slightly to ruffle the mop of hair on his son’s head. The smile on his own face isn’t the same as it had been before.

She doesn’t comment on it further. Chase thanks whatever god is on his side that she didn’t.

Before she can ask any more questions, he scoops the three year old off the kitchen tile and plops him down on the couch in the living room. They played Mario Kart because it was the only game he had that didn’t have a mature rating. The kids seemed to like it, though, so he let himself enjoy it. His daughter kept choosing Rainbow Road, and, after he drove straight off the map for what felt like the thousandth time, he threw the controller into his lap.

It’s half-past six.

He stands up, much to the kids’ dismay. They both put their controllers down in favor of grabbing onto his legs. He pretends like they don’t weigh less than a measly third of his own weight combined, if only so he can hear them laugh for a little while longer.

Their hands, weak as they are, slip off the fabric of his jeans. He stares down at his daughter, pushing her onto her back with his sock-covered foot. She squeals, hands shooting up to grab at Chase’s ankle. Through her laughter, she asks him where he’s going. All Chase manages to say through his own grin is, “Food.”

— 

Chase doesn’t do a lot of cooking nowadays.

That isn’t to say he’s bad at it. He knows what spices taste good together, and how many of them to add to a particular dish. Hell, when he and Stacy were together, Chase was the one who did most of the cooking. There was something about it that he loved. Something about it calmed him when nothing else would.

He’d stopped cooking after Stacy left him. For the most part, the decline in Chase’s time spent in the kitchen was because he’d moved in with Henrik. He figured it would be rude to use all the food in the kitchen for an impromptu casserole that, while tasting heavenly, was definitely not on the healthy side of the spectrum. The man had already taken away all of his junk food privileges, and he didn’t like the idea of testing just how short his temper was. That and ever since he and Stacy had split he’d hardly had enough ambition to get out of bed in the morning, much less spend thirty minutes in the kitchen preparing something that he wouldn’t end up eating half of.

Now, with the kids here, he feels like making something that doesn’t involve a bag of Doritos and half a pack of Double Stuf Oreos. Besides, he doesn’t want to give his daughter any more reason to think of him as a loser, even if he is one. He doubts Stacy would appreciate him ruining their kids’ eating habits.

He’d gone to the grocery store before she had brought the kids over. He had spent over an hour in the produce section alone trying to figure out what the kids would and wouldn’t eat. He could have called Stacy and just asked her what they’d like, but the fact that Chase didn’t know what his kids liked to eat put a bad taste in his mouth.

While holding a pack of mushrooms, it came to him.

On one of their first dates, he had made Stacy spaghetti. Not just any spaghetti, though. He chopped up an onion and some mushrooms and sautéed them before dumping them into the pot of sauce, as well as half a can of corn and some black olives that he’d had in the pantry. It had a load of shit in it, basically, but something about it had worked. A year later, on their wedding day, Chase joked that it was the reason she hadn’t dumped him.

Apparently, whatever he’d put in that spaghetti had worn off.

At first, the kids watched him cook. Their eyes were wide as he told them all about how much their dear mother had pined for him after she’d tasted his cooking. Unsurprisingly, they got bored quickly. They began fidgeting on the barstools they were sitting on, asking Chase questions about anything they could think of, but not able to focus long enough to hear the answer.

Eventually, his daughter jumped down from the barstool she’d been sitting on and scurried back into the living room. Before he could scold her, Chase looked up to see the glint in his son’s eyes, and how his lips were forming a grin so wide it nearly split his face in half. He recognized the face he was looking at. It was like a mirror. He’d seen this exact expression from pictures of himself in the photo albums his mom used to make.

He set the knife he was using onto the cutting board and rushed over to the boy before he could copy his sister. Despite his squirming, Chase put him down onto the floor beside the stools before he could crack his skull open on the tile. Before he followed his sister into the other room, the three year old stuck his tongue out at Chase, who did the same. He wondered, after the kids’ voices were drowned out by Mario Kart, how Stacy must feel every time she looks at the kids and sees Chase. The daredevil, “fuck you” attitude that both kids seemed to have sure as hell hadn’t come from Stacy, that’s for sure.

He scoops up the onion he’d chopped up before the kids distracted him and dumps them into the saucepan on the stove. Then, he grabs the pack of mushrooms from the refrigerator. He tears open the packet and rinses the fungi off in the sink before returning to the cutting board.

Chase’s eyebrows press together. The knife, which he could’ve sworn he put down on the cutting board, is gone. He checks under the pack of mushrooms in case he’d placed them on top of the utensil and behind the can of corn and the black olives. When he comes up empty handed, he even looks in the sink, and then in the dishwasher on the off chance that he’d put it in there out of habit.

When he can’t find the knife anywhere in the kitchen, his eyes linger on the door leading to the living room. He can still hear the kids’ laughter, and the sound coming from the television echoes into the kitchen. They wouldn’t have taken it, would they? No. They might be devious, and far more like Chase than they ought to be, but they know better than to play with knives. Even if he’s the worst parent on the planet, which he very well might be, Stacy’s still a good one.

With his fingers tapping the cutting board, he calls his daughter into the kitchen.

He can hear the game pausing, his son’s sharp whine in protest, followed by her footsteps thumping rapidly against the wood floors. He’s about to tell her to stop running when he hears something behind him. It’s as if all the noise in the house— the TV and his daughter’s footsteps— were coming from right behind him. It’s distorted, though, and filled with static. It’s similar to how Chase imagines an old radio from the Great Depression might sound. His head whips around to find the source of the noise, but nothing’s there.

After he turns his head, the house goes silent. He glances around the kitchen for his daughter, listening for his son’s voice or the noise that had been coming from the TV. At his own sharp intake of breath, he realizes that he can’t even hear himself breathing. He opens his mouth to say something, to call out for his daughter again, but nothing comes out.

“Dad?” He turns his head so hard he gets whiplash. His daughter’s standing in the doorway, looking at him with that same mixture of pity and adoration that Chase has come to expect from people.

“Did one of you take a knife from the kitchen?” The words fall from his lips like a recording. Had she not furrowed her eyebrows at him, Chase would’ve thought he hadn’t spoken at all.

“Are you okay?” He watches her lips as she speaks, but voice he hears isn’t of his daughter’s. That’s Stacy’s voice.

A smile breaks across his lips before he can stop it. “Yeah, of course.”

He can’t remember why he called her into the kitchen. His eyes fall to the cutting board, and at his hands. His knuckles are white with how hard he’s gripping the knife, and— shit, hadn’t he lost that? He glances over to his other hand, which is flat against the board. There’s a pool of blood beneath his hand, dripping down the counter and onto the floor. His hand’s in pieces, not one of his fingers still attached to the rest of his hand. He lifts the appendage until it’s a few inches from his face.

Why is he so _calm_?

With his injured hand clutched close to his chest, he motions the hand still wielding the knife towards the little girl. He doesn’t trust his mouth right now, so without using words he gives her a look that he hopes she’ll understand as, “ _Is this really happening_?” He hadn’t had anything to drink. He’s sure of that. Is he sure of that? God, he feels weird. He feels calm. With his hand in pieces on the cutting board, he should not be feeling calm.

His daughter’s looking at him with wide eyes. There’s no pity or astonishment, there’s no love or adoration. He recognizes something else, something no one has ever looking at Chase with before: _Fear_.

He looks down to his hand again. All five fingers are there. They are no longer on the cutting board, and no longer is there any blood pooling to the tile floor. The knife is still in his hand, however, and he’s quick to drop it onto the counter. He turns his hands to inspect either side of them. Once he’s sure there’s no cuts or traces of blood, he presses them into his face, rubbing at the skin under his eyes roughly.

When Chase looks to his daughter again, her eyes are still wide with fear. He removes his hands from his face and takes a few steps until he’s standing right in front of her. Kneeling down in front of her, he cradles her face in one of his hands. “What’s wrong?” The words are on his lips, but they never enter the air because his throat isn’t working again. No, he can hear himself this time. His voice is just— muted? It’s as if he’s underwater.

His thumb wipes gently at the skin under her eye. That’s when he sees it. All the red. His hand jerks away from her face. He turns his palm. Blood. It’s rolling down his wrists and onto his forearms. He examines his hands for the cause of the mess. All five fingers are still there and there aren’t any cuts or injuries on his hands or arms.

He brings his hand back to his own cheek. Before he can register anything, he falls back to the ground. His back hits the cabinet behind him with a loud crack, and when he looks back to find his daughter, she’s gone. His breaths are coming out choked and his lungs are on fire. He curls in on himself in an effort to lessen the pain shooting through him, but to no avail. He can feel it now, the blood dripping down his cheeks. His shirt is a mess, as is the floor and the cabinets. His hands, coated with red, are painting every surface they can find.

The calm is gone. As the panic finally makes its appearance, Chase realizes that the blood is coming from his eyes. The lights flicker, or— no, wait? Is it his eyesight that flickers? Is he going blind? Everything goes back to normal so quickly he’s left to wonder whether it had happened at all. 

All the sound, which had been distorted and muffled in his ears, is back to normal. He can hear the TV echoing into the kitchen from the living room and the kids’ laughter from where he sits on tile floors. The only thing that lets him know that anything had happened at all is the red on his hands. There’s still blood rolling down his cheeks and dripping from his eyes like tears. His breathing is still raspy, and his lungs are still on fire.

He squeezes his eyes shut, brings his hands up to cover his face, and he prays. He’s been doing that more and more lately. If this goes anything like last time, it won’t do anything to help. He’s not religious, hasn’t been since his mom stopped forcing him to go to church however many years ago, but it’s all he knows how to do.

Tears roll down his cheeks, and he has to bring his hands up to his face to make sure it’s not more blood. He swallows down his shaky breaths and his sobs in hopes that the kids won’t hear. After a few minutes, he regains his composure. He stands on wobbly feet, a scowl forming on his lips as he stares at the cutting board and the knife on the counter. He sucks in another breath. 

Chase continues cooking.

— 

They ate in the living room. He still doesn’t have a dining room table, and while they could have eaten on the barstools in the kitchen, Chase didn’t like the idea of staring at the tile floor he’d been bleeding on a few minutes earlier. Then again, whether or not he’d been bleeding at all was still up for debate.

As stupid as Chase had been known to be in the past, he knew for a fact that blood didn’t normally disappear. Even though he’d prayed to God just before all the red had vanished, he knew better than to believe it had anything to do with the man upstairs. He seriously doubted that God would grant him a miracle like that, especially considering the kind of man Chase was.

He’d decided against bringing it up to his daughter. If for no other reason, he didn’t bring it up because, when he’d come into the living room to tell the kids it was time to eat, she had acted as though nothing had happened. He figured a six year old wouldn’t have been so calm after seeing blood dripping out of her father’s eyes. When she looked at him, her eyes didn’t widen at the lack of red on him. Nor had she acted like she’d been coated with it herself. 

Although he was happy that she hadn’t been traumatized, it brought up more questions than it had answered.

They watched an old episode of _Friends_ while they ate. Even if neither of the kids understood the innuendos or the references, they seemed to enjoy it. Sure, when Stacy picks them up tomorrow night she’s going to be upset that Chase has taught their kids to say things far above their age, but he’s willing to make that sacrifice. Besides, it’s not the worst thing Chase has done, so she’ll have to forgive him.

They liked the spaghetti. With everything that happened in the kitchen, watching them shovel the noodles in as fast as they could made it all worth it. After they finished eating, he opted to put their dirty plates onto the coffee table, rather than go back into the kitchen. He’s aware that that makes him a coward, but Chase was never the strongest person, now was he?

He’d spent the rest of the evening with the kids. They’d cuddled up together on the couch, with his daughter pressed tight against his side and his son on his lap. They watched the movie his daughter had packed in her overnight bag, and every now and then he’d press his face into his son’s hair and kiss his head, and he’d squeeze his daughter closer to him. Sometime during the film, she’d grabbed onto Chase’s thumb. Both the kids had laughed at him when he started crying during one of the more somber musical numbers. He’d exaggerated his sobs after that, and the kids had only laughed harder.

He’d missed this.

By the time the credits start to play, it’s already half-past nine. His son, still sitting on his lap, had already started to fall asleep. His head kept falling backwards, smacking into Chase’s chest, before he’d sit up suddenly in an attempt to stay awake. It wasn’t just his son, however, that was fighting to stay awake. Every few moments he’d see his daughter’s eyes slipping shut and can hear her mumbling under her breath.

He leans forward, the action jerking both kids awake, and grabs the remote from off the coffee table. He has to put the remote a few centimeters from his eyes to see any of the buttons. After he’d mashed a few of them, the TV screen flickers off, and the three of them are plunged into complete darkness. He notices the way his daughter’s grip on his thumb tightens.

With his free hand, he turns his son so they’re facing each other. He tucks his face into the crook of Chase’s neck and wraps his smaller arms around him. He puts his hand under his bottom to keep him pressed against his chest, and he stands up. His daughter stands as well, and as they walk to the guest bedroom she grabs her overnight bag Stacy had packed with the hand not holding onto his thumb.

He pushes the door open with his foot. This room is at the front of the house, so the streetlamps outside peer in through the cracks in the blinds. He turns to his daughter, “Do you have any pajamas?” She nods, using the hand still holding his to point at the bag in her other hand. He takes the sleep clothes Stacy had packed for their son before the girl takes it to the bathroom with her. As he makes his way over to the bed, he hears her flip the light switch and the bathroom door shut.

He lowers the boy still clinging to his chest to the blankets Chase had put on the bed earlier this morning. He doesn’t let go at first, head shoved into his collarbone and his fingers gripping the fabric of Chase’s T-shirt. Eventually he collapses onto the mattress, unable to fight sleep off any longer. He kneels down beside the bed and changes him into his sleep clothes.

As he lifts the covers on top of him, he presses his lips onto his forehead. He hears the bathroom door opening, followed by his daughter’s footsteps behind him. She sits on the bed, her purple pajama bottoms bunching up slightly around her ankles. Chase stands from the floor and walks over to the other side of the bed. He grabs the blanket and tucks her in, as well.

He taps her nose with his finger and kisses her forehead. He whispers, “I love you.” When he pulls back, he sees her big, blue eyes staring up at him. She says it back like it’s a secret, something she wants to keep hidden from the world. He doubts she’s heard a good word about him since Stacy left him.

The bed’s big enough that he could easily sleep in between the two of them. As much as he wants to crawl into bed right now, he can still smell the leftover spaghetti from the kitchen, and he knows it’ll go bad if he leaves it out overnight. He’ll come back once the food’s been put away. He’ll get a good night’s rest, for once. He knows it.

— 

Chase is in the middle of pouring the spaghetti into an old Tupperware container when it happens again. He’d turned on the light so he wouldn’t make an even bigger mess of his kitchen, and his eyes are straining at the onslaught of light. The living room is pitch black. The light from the kitchen isn’t doing much to brighten it up. Every time his eyes drift over to the doorway his stomach does somersaults in his throat.

He’d never been scared of the dark.

The television flickers on. He doesn’t notice it at first, considering he’d been doing his best to keep his eyes away from the living room. What grabs his attention is the noise, the static filling the otherwise silent house. The volume on the TV must be maxed out, what with how it’s echoing through the house. He slams the pot onto the stovetop in his haste to turn the volume down before it wakes the kids, though he’s probably too late. With the volume as loud as it was, he probably woke up everyone within a ten mile radius.

When he lunges for the remote, he slams his foot onto the coffee table. He chokes out a swear that he can’t hear over the TV, turning the volume down as quickly as he can. He glares at the television, and then at the coffee table, before he presses the power button. The screen goes black, and he throws the remote onto the sofa.

He turns away, grumbling under his breath, as he heads back to the kitchen. His foot’s still stinging from its encounter with the coffee table. He yawns, rubbing absently at the skin under his eye. The moment he steps under the doorway into the kitchen, static fills the silence. The television isn’t as loud as it had been before, thankfully, but his eyes snap open at the noise behind him. He whips his head around to the TV, eyebrows squished together.

He’s back in the living room, grabbing the remote without hitting his foot on the table. When he presses the power button this time, the TV doesn’t turn off. He pushes it a couple more times, lips forming a frown when the screen doesn’t do so much as flicker. He flings the remote at the door leading to the kitchen, hears as it clatters against the cabinets. Why had he done that? He cradles his head in his hands, fingers pressing into his skull as he wills the newest batch of panic to go the fuck away. He’s going insane, he knows it. He should’ve just gone to bed.

He sucks in a breath.

The static continues.

Chase is standing in front of the TV when he lifts his head from his hands. He searches behind the TV for the power button, and once he finds it, he presses it. Nothing happens. He presses it again. The screen doesn’t go black, it doesn’t turn off.

He mutters, “This is some _Poltergeist_ shit.” 

He pokes at the screen with his index finger. The second his finger touches the screen, it flickers. The hand that touched the screen smacks his chest with how hard he jerks back from the television. The screen distorts, and colors from around the room bleed together like they had the day Chase had moved in. And then, before he’s able to breathe, the static’s gone. The screen goes black, before it flickers on again.

A woman speaks, “—the vigilante was spotted in New York City earlier today.” Her voice is distorted, and the footage is choppy, warped to the point that it’s almost incoherent. With every other word, the newscaster’s voice is replaced by something deeper, raspier— shifting in tone until it’s something inhuman. The screen goes back to normal when she turns to the man sitting across from her. She continues, “He was some 3,000 miles from his home in Dublin.”

Chase flinches when the screen goes black. He meets his own eyes, wide and bloodshot. He leans towards the screen, pulling at the skin under his eye.

Does he— does Chase always look like this?

Before he can think about it any longer, the screen flickers back to life. He steps away from the TV, watches as the screen flickers from one channel to another. It’s like it’s searching for something. Eventually, it stops. It’s another news station.

The man on the screen is looking at him pointedly, “Don’t make me regret this, Brody.” The voice mixes with Stacy’s, words twisted and blended together until Chase can’t differentiate what’s the anchor’s and what’s his wife’s. His eyes widen, unfocused where they stare at the man on the screen. The newscaster jerks, head nearly smacking into his shoulder with how hard he’s contorting himself. In an instant, he’s back to normal. His voice is booming, not a shred of Stacy’s voice present as he says, “—which begs the question: what’s he doing across the Atlantic?”

Chase stares at the screen, eyes wide with panic. Stacy’s voice is still echoing in his head, voice warping like it had just a few moments ago. He can hear the newscaster’s voice, distant as it is, behind his wife’s. No. His _ex_ -wife’s. They signed the papers a couple weeks ago.

Behind him, in the kitchen, the lights flicker. He turns his head to look at them and his right hand comes up to grab the television screen, like it’ll somehow move if he doesn’t keep his eyes on it. He watches as the lights in the kitchen go out. The television screen goes black not long after. He’s in complete darkness. It’s different from before, somehow. When he took the kids to bed earlier, he hadn’t been scared. He can’t say the same now.

Now, Chase’s head whips around. His eyes, still adjusting in the darkness, are searching for anything that stands out. He could just go to bed. It would so easy to leave the spaghetti on the stove top and he go back to the guest bedroom with the kids and the nice bed. He could sleep. But he knows better. Something’s going on. Something _wrong_ and _horrifying_ and he’d never be able to fall asleep, even if he had the kids curled up beside him and drooling on him.

The idea of walking through the darkness of the house doesn’t sit well with him. He’s yet to find his flashlight in the cardboard boxes, so he’ll have to use something else. He left his phone in the bedroom with the kids, so he can’t use that. There’s a lighter by the front door which he could use. He’ll have to navigate through the dark to get to it, though. Since he only moved in a week or two ago, he hasn’t committed the floorplan, or the whereabouts of his furniture, to his memory yet. Somehow that makes it scarier. If someone’s in the house Chase won’t have the upper hand. He won’t have the advantage of knowing the layout, or the places that people could hide.

Something tells him that even if he knew every inch of the house like the back of his hand, he would still be in the same position he is now: terrified.

His feet must be nailed to the floor, what with how they won’t move. He has to force his body forwards, and, at this rate, the power will have come back on by the time he gets to the lighter. He can’t shake the feeling in his gut. Something’s been gnawing at him for the past few weeks, hiding itself away in the shadows and preparing to pounce when Chase least expects it.

He holds his arms up, stretching them out to either side similar to how he imagines an acrobat might when they walk across the trapeze, to keep himself from bumping into any furniture. He decides against walking through the kitchen, and instead opts to walk down the hallway, the one which passes by the guest bedroom, to get to the front door instead.

His feet, stubborn as they are, stop working entirely when he walks by the guest bedroom. The door, a good fifteen or so feet down the other hallway adjacent to the one he’s in now, is open. He could’ve sworn he’d closed it when he left to put the spaghetti away. 

That same panic from before has its grip on Chase. Its fingers curl around him like vines and each breath he takes burns his lungs. Despite his better judgment, he continues walking. 

The hallway seems longer than it had been before.

One of his arms, still stretched slightly upwards, brushes against the entryway table. He opens the drawer, searching through its contents with his hands. When he finds the lighter, he lets out a deep sigh of relief. He flicks it a couple times before it ignites. He hears his son’s cries. They sound so far away. 

He walks back down the hallway quickly. His ribs are tightening against his lungs. He has to make sure the kids are alright.

He should’ve told Stacy that he wasn’t ready.

His daughter’s crying, now. She’s screaming for Chase and for her mother.

The hallway is growing. Chase is sure of it. It’s stretching to keep him from getting to his kids for as long as possible. Something in him knows it’s an illusion, the same way the blood seeping out of his eyes earlier wasn’t real, either. Another part of him is blind to the fear. His feet move faster, and they are heavy on the floor as he shuffles down the hall.

“This isn’t real,” one part of him says to the other. The voice echoes in the hallway, and he’s unsure whether or not he’d said it aloud.

Before his panic can respond, the flame fizzles out.

His eyes widen, and he curses under his breath softly. 

When Chase reignites the lighter, he’s standing in front of the door to the guest bedroom. The door is open, and there’s a man standing in front of the doorway, with his back to Chase.

The walls are red, again. Chase can hear himself speaking distantly. He’s shouting.

The man turns. He’s got a grin on his face so wide it’s as surprise he hasn’t ripped the corners of his lips to shreds.

Chase is still shouting. He can feel the words in his throat, and he can hear himself far away.

His lighter goes out. The last thing he sees before it goes out is the man walking towards him.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I would greatly enjoy writing more for this community!! Any requests would be appreciated.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/milo-kno)!
> 
> \- Miles


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